Colors
by phineyj
Summary: What a difference a vacation makes


**Author's note: Written for snarkbait's House-Cameron lyricathon, September 2006. If you look carefully, as well as 'Colors', you'll find references to Al Green, 'Love and Happiness, Joe Cocker, 'Feelin' Alright', Goldfrapp, 'Crystalline Green' and Damian Rice, 'Delicate'.**

Colors

"_When you're gone all the colors fade."_ Amos Lee – Colors.

The first thing I notice is the new green bag. It's large and made of some canvas-like material printed with white daisies. It's inappropriately jaunty for the office. I've never seen her before with anything other than the dull black shoulder bag she lugs her laptop around in. She dumps the new bag on one of the chairs in the conference room, where it squats like a fat repulsive toad. With a daisy pattern.

"Taking a trip, Dr Cameron?" I inquire, "Or have you decided to give up pretending you have a life outside the hospital and just take up residence here?"

She looks up at me defiantly, and I notice she's wearing lipstick, something else she never does, hospital fundraisers excepted (I repress the image of that red dress; there's no way I'm taking a cold shower this early in the morning). It's just past eight o'clock. I'm only here because they do bacon sandwiches in the cafeteria on Fridays and last week they'd run out by the time I got in.

"I'm on vacation from tomorrow, remember? You signed the form?" she says accusingly.

Like I would have done that. Although the signature on the piece of paper she's now waving at me does look like mine. I didn't know she was that good at forging my signature; she's learning something, at least.

She looks at me pityingly, "You said you'd sign anything I damn well wanted if I'd leave you in peace to finish Grand Theft Auto?"

I do recall saying that now, but I'm not going to admit it.

"Still doesn't explain the bag-lady look," I say, trying to get the initiative back.

Sometimes I regret encouraging my minions to talk back to me. I preferred it when she jumped whenever I spoke. The attitude she's standing in at the moment, lips pursed, hands on hips, doesn't suggest someone who's about to admit she's not taking a vacation and scuttle off to deal with my in-tray, pronto.

"I'm leaving tonight after work," she says, "Now, perhaps we can stop discussing my luggage and talk about the case?"

---

I'm sitting in my office, at my desk, gazing at nothing in particular on the internet. It's late afternoon Tuesday, or maybe Wednesday; I'm not sure, and I don't care enough to check. The sky outside is a dull gray and the last of the day's light as it sneaks in around the closed blinds is gray too. Even my red mug of coffee, long gone cold, is drained of color by the general darkness of the room.

It's summer, or so I'm told. As though our exact position relative to that of a boiling ball of orange gas in space has any bearing whatever on the important things in life. Only fools and weather forecasters will tell you otherwise. If they are in fact separate entities.

I wonder what she's doing. I imagine her sitting on a beach somewhere, lying on a gaudy towel, using her bag for a pillow. I give the towel a pattern of palm trees in white reversed out of a lime green background. Her possessions – sun cream, plastic bottle of lukewarm water, cell phone – are spread out on another towel beside her.

She has her hair up in a ponytail and the strands of red-brown hair at its end tickle her nicely-bronzing neck as the breeze catches them. The swimsuit gives me some trouble, because I can't make up my mind if it's a bikini or not, but after a little thought, I settle on a navy blue one-piece with a thin double white stripe around the neckline. The neckline I have no problem imagining whatsoever.

She's reading a book, sunglasses perched on the end of her nose to block out the glare reflected from the sea. The book has a shiny black cover with splashes of red and pink. From the garish design, I decide it's John Grisham or something of that ilk.

I check the date. Turns out it is Tuesday after all; this week's going so slowly I wonder if Cuddy's current diabolical plan is to slow time so we all get more work done. Won't succeed.

I grab the nearest piece of paper. It's an absence request form from Chase; what is it with my staff this month? Are vacations infectious? I flip it over and calculate the exact number of hours and minutes left between now and next Monday, when Cameron gets back.

It's far too many.

The door opens and Wilson barges in.

"Pull yourself together, House, we're going for a drink," he says.

"I'm working," I tell him with distaste.

"No, you're not," he says, in one of his more annoying tones, "You're wondering what Cameron's up to. It's your own fault, House; you can't expect her to hang around forever until you admit you like her."

I hate it when he's right.

------

Cameron's been back nearly a whole day and she still hasn't spoken to me, apart from a chirpy 'good morning' when she walked in first thing. We don't have a case today but she'll be making herself predictably useful somewhere. At least someone is. Foreman's pretending to do charting, while chomping methodically through the packet of Ghirardelli's chocolates Cameron dumped on the conference table this morning, while Chase appears to be conducting an experiment in sleeping with his eyes open.

Eventually I find her in the lab, fiddling about with slides. Even in the dim blue lighting she's as pale as ever; whatever she did on vacation, she definitely didn't sit on a beach. She looks a lot more relaxed than she did a week ago; I realize I don't know who she went on vacation with, if anyone.

She's got her hair up today and a wisp has fallen down out of her ponytail, just grazing her neck. I'm recalling my fantasy swimsuit-wearing Cameron, when I notice the real one's stopped what she's doing and is looking at me.

"Do you need me for something?" she asks, politely.

I sit down on a stool, hooking my cane over the stainless steel edge of the workbench.

"Maybe I want to know how your vacation was," I suggest, lightly.

She snorts. Actually snorts, and starts briskly tidying things away on the bench.

"Why, did you miss me?" she asks, "Should I have sent a postcard?" Her tone is amused.

"Yeah, you should," I say, firmly, "You could have sent one of Alcatraz; I would have stuck it up in the clinic." She sent _Wilson_ one; not that I'm jealous.

"Okay," she says impatiently, yanking her glasses from the bridge of her nose and folding them up neatly inside their case.

She doesn't bother to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. "So I guess you want to hear all about my trip? See my photographs? Over coffee or something?"

"Why not, if you're buying," I say, surprising myself, but not as much as I surprise Cameron. Then I think, excellent new tactic. I'm never good to her. Hopefully I've really confused her now.

And that's how we find ourselves in the café across the road from the hospital, in a booth at the back. It's five o'clock on a Monday afternoon; for all people know it's her annual evaluation.

That's how it starts.

------

Another summer, another pile of vacation forms from my staff. The difference is, this time I filled one in myself. Everyone needs a change of scene now and again. Well, that's what I tell myself, as the minutes tick off the departures board and my enthusiasm for this trip wanes with them.

"There's still time to change your mind," I say to Cameron, watching her futzing with her carry-on bag. "You've got nearly an hour to think better of spending a week in Florida with a grumpy old man."

"Better a week in Florida than a week in Princeton," she says, rummaging in her bag and getting out a magazine.

It took some doing, but she finally persuaded me. Although I think it was when Wilson said, "You can't go out in the sun, House, can you, or you'll catch on fire?" that finally made my mind up.

He timed it so that Cameron was passing our table in the dining room right at that moment. And although she acted like she didn't hear him, I could tell by the momentary tightening of her shoulders that she was trying not to laugh.

Wilson's going to find out why it's called a _sand_wich when I get back, but still, he had a point – it probably won't kill me to take a week off.

I've left all the arrangements up to her, because I don't really care where we go, and when we get there I'm pleasantly surprised by the ground floor apartment she's rented for the week.

"Hope you're up to sharing a bathroom," she comments sarcastically, as we unpack our things. She says this because I told her all her multicolored bottles of girl-stuff were giving mine cooties, last time she stayed over at my place.

I astonish her by agreeing to go to the beach on our first morning, without an argument. I'm not in the habit of going to beaches – I've figured out canes and sand aren't compatible by now – but what she doesn't know is that surfing is just one of the long list of things I had to give up after the infarction. But somehow it doesn't matter too much today; the surf's no good on this beach anyway. And I won't admit it, but it's nice just sitting doing nothing while I admire the close-up view of Cameron applying sun tan lotion to her neck.

We don't do a whole lot. We sit on the beach early in the morning when it's not so hot; we go for lunch – Cameron actually eats stuff – and we spend most of the afternoons in bed.

On the last night, over dinner, I ask her to move in with me. She doesn't reply right away, so to fill the time before she says no, I tell her, "Think of all the time you'll save…time to do important stuff like make me coffee before you leave for work."

She ignores my comment, and says, instead, "Are you asking me because you think that's what I'm expecting?"

Women. Never can give you a straight yes or no; there always has to be psychoanalysis first.

"I prefer it when you're around," I reply, "If we live in the same place, you'll be around all the time. And we've been together a week here, and we're still speaking."

"It's not the same as a vacation, House," she says, softly. "What about when we disagree over a case? How are we not going to bring that home with us?"

"I don't know," I tell her, frustrated. I suck at these sorts of conversations. I never had one with Stacy; she basically gave me no choice in the matter – I got home one night and she was there, that was that.

And then it occurs to me actions speak louder than words.

------

"No wonder they named a cocktail after it," Cameron says, dreamily, the very last rays of the sun catching the sparkle in her eyes.

"I've got sand in places sand shouldn't be," I grumble, as we put our clothes back on and she hauls me to my feet.

She just laughs, and says, "Tell me about it."

------

We've been back at the hospital for all of an hour and Cuddy is whining about doctors who 'forget' to complete case notes before they disappear to Florida for a week, Chase has a tie on that's just never going to be friends with his shirt, Wilson's got bags under his eyes from another night on the couch in his office and Foreman's pretending he didn't break the coffee machine. A patient's on his way to us with weird neurological symptoms that have the morons over at Princeton General completely baffled.

While I ponder unusual brain diseases, think up new ways to annoy Chase and send Foreman to fetch coffee from the cafeteria, I consider my apartment. Since Sunday, half my closet's full of Cameron's clothes and the fridge has salad in it, which is freaking out the beer. Her toiletry collection has invaded and occupied a shelf in the bathroom.

It feels kind of weird, like Christmas when you're a kid. You know it's going to be a let down, but you can't help feeling slightly excited anyway.

Later, when the patient's safely stowed in ICU and everyone's gone, I flip the switch in my office so we're plunged into the dark, corner her against my desk and kiss her.

"What was that for?" she asks, sounding a little dazed.

"No-one was watching," I tell her, and we go home.

THE END


End file.
